"Thank you. And I have notes prepared on a couple of subjects, including metallurgy which interested the Menegroth Dwarves; and I can come up with similar exposition on other topics as may interest you. But I can't stay long this visit - maybe the lectures I have plus one more of comparable size. I'm due back across the continent soon. I should have longer when I come back with Maitimo."

"You have the means to travel across the continent quickly?"

"I can turn into a bird of a species that can fly about a hundred miles an hour. It's nothing on the teleportation, but it's what I have prepped."

"That's very useful. We have shipping routes stretching several thousand miles in the eastern direction, but it takes a long time for news to reach us from there."

"I'd expect it to. I can't carry significant cargo as a bird, but I have found myself relaying a lot of messages. Would you be willing to fill in my map?" She pulls out her map. "People have been tracing in the air on it for me."

"The locations of the other Dwarven kingdoms is not our information to disclose. The Men don't seem to regard their location as a secret but I'm not sure that's because they're fine with it being shared, rather than because they don't understand what we're asking."

"Any other landmarks you could share? Mountains, bits of coastline?"

"There might be surveyors interested in selling it."

"Fair enough." She puts the map away.

"Do the newcomers have weapons for the war? Are they interested in trading for some?"

"They have swords and bows. It'd be a long trade route, although it sounds like you're accustomed to those; and they haven't asked about it but may not have known it was an option."

"We'd be delighted if you'd make it known to them that that's an option. We can offer something in exchange, since sending an emissary would be a substantial expense on our part obviated by your agreeing to take the message."

"Can I take an IOU?"

"Certainly. We'll have confirmation notorized that you conveyed a message across the continent for us and are owed a favor of comparable expense."

"We'd be delighted to see that the lecture hall is booked for any time you care to speak; we will need to expend no effort to see to it that it's full."

"In brief, fiat currency is a system where it is customary to trade arbitrary things for various quantities of IOUs - usually not of favors; most places get this system off the ground by backing the currency in something concrete and scarce, but once it's underway it can actually be backed by nothing at all but the sheer momentum of the system and some anti-counterfeit measures."

A considering silence. "That seems to run a serious risk of sudden losses in faith in the system, perhaps resulting from certain kinds of tampering, that would make lots of unrelated trades fail."

"That's why you need anti-counterfeiting, and to be very careful with the sorts of institutions that may spring up to do arbitrage and lending and storage. The advantage of the system is that if one person has something another wants but the first person doesn't want anything the second has, the fiat currency is universally desirable and there's no need to run a series of errands trying to find something agreeable and comparable in value. They can just settle on a number."

"We have gold for that, does this have any advantages over gold?"

"Gold's a fine thing to back it with starting out; fiat can be made much easier to transport and allows you to eventually inflate to accommodate greater total wealth in the system even if you don't happen to find gold ore at a convenient rate."

Serious nods. "We'll schedule a public debate on the topic beginning after your lecture," someone says, "and suggest to some specific small market that they try it and report results to everyone else."

"Good idea. Any other questions before I go dump science and econ on an amphitheater full of Dwarves?"

"None come to mind. It's a worthy use of time to have met you, Loki Odinsdottir."